Echigo Stout | Uehara Shuzou Co. Ltd. / Echigo Beer Pub

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T&M: Smooth and very light tasting for a stout.
Way mild for a 7% abv. Pretty much non-descript as
far as taste goes. Chalk taste throughout with a
carbonated nutty feel at the end. Not impressed as
much as i thought i would have, by the smell of it.

D: Had high hopes for this one, but alas, it certainly
didn't live up to my expectations. Well, you live and
learn. if your in a desperate pinch to drink, then
try it out for yourself and see if it's right for
you. as for this reviewer, i'd rather drink some sake
to get a taste for Japan.

Decent stout but not really anything special. This is a strong-ish stout that is relatively light on roasted malt flavor. There's a lot more caramel character than I'd like, but it's still an enjoyable beer. The body is a dark, transparent ruby, below a creamy off-white head. The aroma is dominated by caramel and butterscotch with hints of fruit and roast. At 7% abv, I expect more roast than this beer brings. The flavor doesn't really help. It's fairly sweet and roast only really shows up in the aftertaste. There's some coffee and chocolate in the finish, as well. Mouthfeel is a bit too thin and a tad cloying but not bad. At this strength, this beer is kinda in between a normal stout and an imperial. Unfortunately, it doesn't manage to pull off the high points of either. However, Echigo Stout also doesn't commit any grievous sins. It's just a ho-hum strong-ish stout dominated by caramel malt. My review scores wouldn't be so harsh if this beer had been placed in the the standard American Stout category, rather than with the big boys.

A bottle I purchased recently at the Buford Highway Farmers Market. Japan has long been known for their take on stouts, and I was looking forward to trying another example. At first look (and taste) this had all the makings of a very nice stout. Poured quite black with a decent head, but no gusher. Smelled nicely roasty with bitter chocolate and coffee notes. The initial taste had more of that quite nice bitter chocolate, a nice creaminess, a hint of coffee and licorice, some nice roasty notes....and then it went wrong. Mid-palate you get smoke and then at the finish band-aid. This beer, to my taste is infected, or conversely, badly made and contains off flavors that greatly detract from the experience. As far as I could tell, it didn't have a freshness date (although there is a code on the bottle that might be, but if so, I couldn't interpret what it was trying to tell me), and the taste wasn't old....it was of infection. Disappointing, especially as this wasn't cheap. Oh well.

Purchased at some wholefoods-type store in central Hong Kong, muled back to Australia for sharing.

Pours a deep, dark reddish-brown colour. Head is beige, nice and frothy when poured, sinks to a thinnish film but leaves a decent sheet of lacing behind. Fairly decent, could be darker.

Smells a little bit roasty, quite sweet but largely dry, with hints of espresso, molasses and licorice. Slight grainy, almost adjuncty sweetness floats over the top, which is unfortunate; the roasty notes that are there should be more prominent.

Taste is unfortunately sweet, and a bit segmented and detached. Lots of flavours coming through individually without a good coherence. Sweet grain, carob, espresso and char, with some vanilla notes and aniseed and black pepper. Put in a logical order, these flavours may have played out to great effect, but it's confused, and finishes very astringently while the predominant flavour is that carob.

Not a lot of body to it; goes down with a smoothness but I really want more substance.

From the brewery that brought me Echigo Pilsener and rice lager, this is an improvement, but for a 6+% stout it's disappointing.

Bottle in trade with miketd. Thanks!
Pours a dark brown black color with a light tan head. Smell is lightly roasty, and very mild, and thin. Taste is lightly roasty with a slight char, but watery. Very easy drinking and mild, but not particularly great. Just too thin for a stout.

A: Black in the glass, with dark golden brown in the dimple. 3 fingers of dark tan head. Some slight lacing.

S: Smells over hopped. Also, something I can't quite put my finger on. I wanna think it's some kind of mold? Maybe they used rice and koji in the beer? It's hard to detect the typical stout scents around it.

T/MF: Oh, that's weird. More of the moldy flavor. It's like it's floating on top of a light roastiness. I really do think they incorporated some sake into this, because the odd flavor does remind me of that bland alcohol flavor in almost all sakes I've tried. It's fairly soft, but with a lighter body.

While I appreciate them doing something different, I don't think it works at all.

Pours a pleasantly dark, but relatively translucent red-black colour, with a nice fine head of mocha brown. Some lacing sits clearly around the edges of the glass. Body is quite liquid, surprisingly, keeping it fluid and dynamic. Not bad.

Nose is dim and slightly roasted, with a twinge of sweetness, and a rattling dark grain character, like the last coffee bean stuck in the grinder. There's also a hint of unpleasantness to it, something a little like rubbish heaped in a back alley, or leftover rice meal. It rather puts me off the taste.

Taste is thick with molasses and burnt coffee, giving a sweet, husky, crispened flavour, which works nicely against the smooth, slightly creamy and foamy mouthfeel. Very little sweetness, but the feel somewhat makes up for that. Finish is actually quite long, again helped by the feel, leaving some bitter grounds flavours on the back. The feel is really quite exceptionally good. While the flavours aren't as complete and full as they could be, there's very little to fault in how it feels in the mouth.

The bouquet is kind of weak, with faint malt, and a light mixed nuts quality. Taste improves with a slight chewy light smoke and tobacco, but also of store bought pre ground coffee. There is strangely next to no finish on this beer.

A strange mouthfeel with a small abv content that seems wet but masked easily. Wet but strangely drinkable and easy.